Letters: Women and Power

Oct. 24, 2014

Women and Power

To the Editor:

I have been thinking about what the Book Review’s Women and Power issue (Oct. 12) means for women. We get one “special issue” (as the front cover boldly proclaims) dedicated primarily to books, reviews and essays written by women. This draws attention to the way that women are underrepresented in every other issue of the Book Review.

How about striving to achieve parity between male and female writers and reviewers every week, instead of a token paean to women in literature once a year? No one would object if you also reached out to literary people who don’t identify with traditional gender binaries.

Thanks for the initial effort, but I will be looking forward to seeing more women writers in your pages every week.

MIRAH IPPOLITO

BALTIMORE

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To the Editor:

I believe it was Samuel Hoffenstein who once said something on the order of “Breathes there a man with soul so tough who thinks two sexes aren’t enough?” I suggest one is no better.

ERIC GRIFFEL

CHEVY CHASE, MD.

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To the Editor:

As a father of two girls (ages 10 and 12) who are avid readers, I am struck that the special issue of the Book Review did not have a section on books for and about girls. The omission is especially glaring as so many of the reviews of books for the middle grades tend to be for and about boys. If the Book Review can dedicate a special issue to women, it should be able to find a little space for the girls who will become women soon.

JASON DAVIDSON

SPRINGFIELD, VA.

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To the Editor:

For some reason my eyes did not decipher the psychedelic title “Women and Power” on the cover of the Oct. 12 Book Review. I started reading and quickly exclaimed to my husband that this was the best issue of the Book Review ever! I couldn’t believe the number of women authors and reviewers, all about topics that greatly interest me. I ran to the computer to order half a dozen books that I suddenly discovered I must have.

When I belatedly learned the theme, my first thought was, This must be what it is like to read the Book Review the other 51 weeks of the year. Thank you for such a wonderful edition of the Book Review. It was a joy and a delight.

It was perplexing to find the long-winded Page 1 review of Hilary Mantel’s story collection “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher” (Oct. 5) dominated by the reviewer’s thrilling discovery and bizarre infatuation with the not-very-obscure word “bleb.”

Even more baffling was your publication, the previous week, of Mantel’s title story, wonderful as it is. Surely there are lots of reader-starved authors who haven’t won even their first Man Booker Prize, whom your readers might be enriched by and encouraged to discover.

PAULA DIAMOND

AMAGANSETT, N.Y.

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To the Editor:

I much enjoyed Terry Castle’s review of Hilary Mantel’s short stories, and especially her enthusiasm for Mantel’s use of the word “bleb.” Osip Mandelstam had a special regard for writers who reintroduced an obscure word to use. But “bleb” has already been reintroduced, by Seamus Heaney in his poem “North” (c. 1975): “Keep your eye clear / as the bleb of the icicle, / trust the feel of what nubbed treasure / your hands have known.” The treasure is the word-hoard, nubbed with opportunities to restore old words or dialect words to use, as a tree branch is nubbed with little lumps that may become new branches.

ROBERT TRACY

BERKELEY, CALIF.

The writer is an emeritus professor of English and Celtic studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Meanwhile, Online

“Apparently only dudes write American history,” Rachel Hope Cleves tweeted in response to James McPherson’s By the Book interview (Oct. 5). “Oh yeah, and Doris Kearns Goodwin. Besides her, no ladies admitted.” Cleves and others took to Twitter and blogs to protest McPherson’s response to a question about “the best historians writing today” — six white men, most Ivy League-affiliated, all over 70.

On her Historiann blog, Ann M. Little issued the “Historiann challenge,” inviting followers to post interviews with themselves about their reading in American history. Over on Historista, Megan Kate Nelson described the result of her suggestion to her Facebook friends that they create their own list of “the best historians writing today,” planning to post the results, but many of them objected to “best of” lists on principle.

Elsewhere, 285 readers on Twitter recommended Jodi Picoult’s By the Book interview (Oct. 12), while on The Times’s Facebook page, 55 others objected to her comment that she “cannot stand” Russian literature. “I’m so sorry for you,” Cecilia Piccato Walter wrote in one of the kinder comments. Also on Facebook, 57 readers confirmed that people either love Lena Dunham (reviewed on Oct. 12) or hate her.